On Thursday the IPCA will release the report into their year long investigation into the actions of Police at the Wellington protest. There are reports that hardware stores around the Wellington region have run out of whitewash, buckets and paint brushes.

The Independent Police Conduct Authority will release the findings of its inquiry into police operations during the protest and occupation of Parliament grounds last year on Thursday.

The 23-day protest, which started on January 8 and went until March 2 last year, was led by group opposed the Government’s Covid-19 vaccine mandates but quickly grew to incorporate other fringe and disenfranchised causes. It came to a riotous end when police moved in and ejected the occupiers.

The authority received nearly 2000 complaints regarding police conduct, interviewed more than 350 people and needed an extra month to finish the inquiry.

It asked for $3.5 million to investigate the allegations made from the occupation.

Those interviewed included protesters, police, and other key parties, including former prime minister Jacinda Ardern, former speaker of the house Trevor Mallard, and former Wellington mayor Andy Foster.

The amount of information to analyse was so vast, an additional month was needed to finish the report, Authority chair Judge Colin Doherty said. The report will now be released on Thursday.

Stuff

There’s no way they can admit any of the regime’s handling of this protest was wrong. There might be a token apology for the worst isolated incidents, but that’s all. To say the Police were wrong is to say the government and the media were also wrong (and lying or depicting the protest wrongly). They’re not going to do that. Not in a month of Sundays.

Instead, we will get concern trolled about how difficult the whole situation was, how the Police found walloping old men and women really challenging and we should all feel sorry for them.

What we won’t hear is how many Police have been charged for their callous disregard for safety, wrongful arrest, inappropriate charging of people, and illegally using bricks, firehoses and fire extinguishers against people. Don’t forget the indiscriminate use of pepper spray, gaslighting us into thinking acid was thrown at Police when it was in fact their own pepper spray, and the use of grenade launchers, rubber bullets and tear gas.

We saw them:

We saw them again:

Unless and until Police are charged for their illegal and dangerous actions then a whitewash report is meaningless.

I’ll be pleasantly surprised, but won’t hold my breath that the IPCA produces a truly independent report that holds Police accountable for their deplorable actions in bringing violence to the streets of Wellington.

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As much at home writing editorials as being the subject of them, Cam has won awards, including the Canon Media Award for his work on the Len Brown/Bevan Chuang story. When he’s not creating the news,...